THE CROSS OF PEACE

and the Nordic race which Armand had first heard from
Lieutenant Meyer in the days of the Ruhr, and afterwards
from Otto von Menzel and Gustav Hoffmann They were
establishing the code of the bully in every German town,
smashing Jewish shops, beating Jews, suppressing liberal
newspapers, arresting leaders of intellectual thought

The German people seemed to have gone insane They
were hailing this as a liberation, as a breaking of chains,
as a new gospel They were worshipping that Austrian
spellbinder with a toothbrush moustache as though they
had found their prophet They called him Der Fuhrer—the
Leader Millions of arms were outstretched as he passed,
with the shout of Heil Hitler f * The sign of the swastika was
on every flag and every young man s arm—the sign of the
crooked cross which Armand had watched in a procession of
German youth not long ago m Berlin

The English newspapers were filled with reports of brutali-
ties, beatings, arrests, suicides, murders Jews were fleeing
from the country Great scientists who happened to be Jews
had been expelled from universities and hospitals and labora-
tories Von Papen—a man with an unpleasant record—
had made a revolting speech, in which he glorified war as the
training ground of youth, and sneered at men who wished
to die in their beds, and said that the duty of German mother-
hood was to raise sons to fight for the Fatherland A young
Nazi had killed his own brother who was a Communist
An Austrian lady had been stripped and beaten Young
bullies were going about with iron rods in rubber tubes,
Hogging political opponents, breaking their arms, dragging
them mto cellars where they were bashed and brutaJIy
used Bands of Nazis were invading the forbidden zones
across their frontiers Danzig, the city of the Polish Corridor,
was m a ferment, and the German populations were xnarchwag
and singing the old battle-songs The Swastika flag had beeft
raised above the Rothhous Hxder's lieutenants—men of suus^r
record, according to the English press—were